Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
July 29, 2018
Hello All – The world looks with horror at our country's cruel treatment of immigrants and their children. More than 700 immigrant children, separated from their parents at our southern border, have yet to be reunited with their parents. Here we have an American version of "the banality of evil." The lifelong traumas now inflicted on hundreds of young children because of their forced separation from their parents were accomplished by a bureaucratic system layered with cruelty and incompetence.
More than 400 parents separated from their children have been deported. Was the rush to deport them a deliberate, sadistic cruelty, so that they would never think again that America was a place that they wanted to come to? Or was it just carelessness? Who will be held accountable for these crimes? The Trump administration violated a court order mandating the reunification of parents and children by July 26th. Despite the government's claims that they have "succeeded," they clearly have not. Also, there are reports of custodial staff being ordered not to comfort children, as well as reports of the use of drugs to "tranquilize" children. Sexual molesting of imprisoned children was reported in yesterday's news.
This week Dr. Irwin Redlener, pediatrician and former president of Children's Health Fund, wrote that "The story of what's happening to the children of asylum seekers from Central America may be of greater moral import than everything else that's vying for front-page coverage. It's an issue that may permanently besmirch the perception of America." Dr.Redlener urges that Alex Azar, the Health and Human Services secretary who is responsible for the care of the children, be fired asap. Crimes of the Border Patrol and staff at custodial facilities should also be investigated. Most importantly, US policy towards refugees from Central America must change to take into account the responsibility of our government for creating the conditions that drive people to flee their countries. Please look at the several articles linked below that address the historical roots of our immigration chaos in the US military policies in Central America in the 1980s. We need to press our political elite to treat the border crisis as the profound moral crisis that it is.
News Notes
In the latest attempt to break Israel's illegal blockade of Gaza, a small ship sailing from Italy was hijacked in international waters today by the Israeli navy. In addition to passengers from 16 nations, the boat carried $15 million in medical supplies, for which there is a desperate shortage in Gaza. No injuries are reported.
Last week six more defendants were on trial for attempting to stop the Spectra pipeline at Indian Point in 2016. On Friday, three of the defendants were found not guilty, while the remaining three defendants – who had crawled inside the pipeline – had their case deferred until October 23. The case is important because it appears that the judge might allow the defendants to plead the "necessity defense" – that their action was justified to prevent a greater harm. If this defense is successful, it will have national importance. For background and more information, see the Facebook page of Stop the Algonquin Pipeline Expansion (SAPE). News 12 also broadcast a decent story.
For those few Earthlings who haven't already seen it, check out this powerful story and video about the Swedish student Elin Ersson, who stopped the deportation of an Afghanistan man by boarding his plane and refusing to sit down, thus not allowing the plane to take off. A true hero! (And the New York Times version is here.
As reported last week, the Deep Thinkers at the Army Corps of Engineers have proposed six possible plans to establish storm-surge protectors on the Hudson River. Riverkeeper has some cogent reasons why this plan needs a lot more scrutiny; and you can sign a petition to that effect here.
Seventeen-year-old Ahed Tamimi was released from an Israeli prison today, after serving an 8-month sentence for slapping and kicking Israeli soldiers who came to her village, thus causing great embarrassment to the IDF. For a useful roundup of all the trouble Ahed has caused the Israeli occupiers of her homeland, go here.
Finally, 139 House Democrats joined Republicans this week to pass a $717 billion military spending bill. Needless to say, Westchester Democrats Eliot Engel and Nita Lowey voted along with the Republicans. They are so progressive!
Things to Do/Coming Attractions
Ongoing – CFOW holds a vigil/rally each Saturday at the VFW Plaza in Hastings (Warburton and Spring) from 12 to 1 p.m. Everyone invited; please join us!
Sunday, August 5th – The next CFOW monthly meeting will be held at the Dobbs Ferry Historical Society, 12 Elm St. in Dobbs, from 7 to 9 p.m. Everyone is invited to these meetings. In addition to reviewing our work of the past month, current events, and plans for the next monthly, we can pause to remember the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings of August 6th & 9th, 1945.
CFOW Nuts & Bolts
Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester. We meet for a protest/rally each Saturday in Hastings, from 12 to 1 p.m., at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.) Our leaflet and posters for our rallies are usually about war or climate change, but issues such as racial justice or Trump's immigration policies are often targeted, depending on current events. We meet on the first Sunday of each month, from 7 to 9 p.m., at the Dobbs Ferry Historical Society. Our weekly newsletter is archived at https://cfow.blogspot.com/; and news of interest and coming events is posted on our CFOW Facebook page. If you would like to make a financial contribution to our work, please send your check to CFOW, PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706. Thanks!
This Newsletter
Articles linked in the CFOW newsletter are intended to illuminate some of the main action-issues about which we are concerned. Coming mostly from the "dissenting media," they provide an alternative to the perspectives of the mainstream media. In addition to the excellent "Featured Essays," I especially recommend Mike Klare's two articles on Trump's global military strategy; the set of articles on North Korea and the prospects for peace; the several articles on the roots of our "immigration crisis"; an alarming article about the melting of the Arctic; a pair of good articles on the frailties of "Russiagate"; and another insightful article by Amira Hass and the moral crisis of Israel's Palestinian policies.
Rewards!
This week's Rewards! for stalwart readers are on the serious side. They come from CFOW favorite Hudson Valley Sally. The almost-beyond-belief arrogance, incompetence, and sadism of the US immigration people is responded to by Hudson Valley Sally's beautiful version of the Woody Guthrie classic, "Deportees". And here is Hudson Valley Sally's version of our next national anthem, Phil Och's "Power and the Glory." A lot of Hudson Valley Sally's music is on YouTube; check it out!
Best Wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
FEATURED ESSAYS
The Resurgence of Political Authoritarianism: An Interview With Noam Chomsky
From Truth Out [July 29, 2018]
---- The "political landscape" is indeed ominous. While today's political and social circumstances are much less dire, still they do call to mind Antonio Gramsci's warning from Mussolini's prison cells about the severe crisis of his day, which "consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born [and] in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear." One morbid symptom is the resurgence of political authoritarianism, a highly important matter that is properly receiving a great deal of attention in public debate. …. The major attack on the institutions and values of liberal democracy is by the powerful business classes, intensifying since Reagan as both political parties have drifted toward greater subordination to their interests — the Republicans to such an extreme that by now they barely can be considered a political party. Anyone who finds this surprising must be uninformed about American society and how it functions. By now, as business power has been unleashed by its servants in the Republican Party, the traditional business attack on "the institutions and values of liberal democracy" has reached levels not seen since the Gilded Age, if even then. [Read More]
Queen Esther on the Rio Grande: Reunited With Their Children, Immigrant Mothers Find Themselves in a Strange and Unforgiving Land
By Debbie Nathan, The Intercept [
---- I discovered her during the first week of her and her little girl's separation. I live in Brownsville, Texas. There, on May 10, Cruz had been one of dozens of immigrants who clanked into my city's federal courthouse, in handcuffs, leg irons, and waist chains, for one of those "mass trials" that people were just starting to talk about … Before sentencing, they have a chance to stand in their chains and speak to the judge. Many are barely literate; almost all are tired, hungry, and miserable. Very few say anything; to do so requires unusual bravery. Cruz stood and spoke — though she was quaking with fear, she later told me — and her words were recorded as part of the proceedings of the day. "Is my little girl going to go with me when I get deported?" she asked the judge. The judge of Brownsville in his robe also responded with sympathy. He told Cruz and the other parents that he thought they would be reunited with their children in "immigration camp," though he wasn't really sure if this was so. His uncertainty caused him audible distress, and he delivered a brief, impromptu speech to the assistant attorney. If it were not true that parents would be "joined" with their children, the judge said sternly, then the government was surely creating for their parents a species of "hell." The judge gave his hell speech on Thursday, May 10. Immediately afterward, Cruz was sent to immigration detention. She was released from hell on Monday evening, July 16. [Read More] Forced separation of children from their parents is not limited immigrants; read "Let Me Tell You What Forced Separation Feels Like," by Nicole Braun [Link].
Why a 17-year-old Palestinian Went Out to Stab Jews
---- Teenager Mohammed Tarek Dar Yusef Abu Ayush from the village of Kobar was well aware of what likely lay in store for his parents, family and village. The revenge actions by the Israel Defense Forces, Shin Bet security service and settlers for last year's murder of the Salomon family by someone from his village didn't deter him. A year later he chose to commit his own act of blind vengeance with no defined target, for no clear reason. He wasn't deterred by the chance that he would be killed or wounded, or arrested and forced to spend the rest of his life behind bars. … The question isn't why he took a knife and went out to stab Jews to death. The question is why so few Palestinians choose to do the same. … The answer is that the vast majority of Palestinians don't choose vengeance and don't take up knives to stab settlers, civilians and soldiers – and thus commit suicide. The vast majority choose to refrain from attacking, knowing that desperate lone actions are of no use. But the vast majority recognizes and identify with what's behind such attacks – an outcry against a century of injustice and dispossession and years more of the same to come. [Read More]
God Only Knows
By Kathy Kelly, Voices for Creative Nonviolence [July 23, 2018]
"If they would just confirm to us that my brother is alive, if they would just let us see him, that's all we want. But we can't get anyone to give us any confirmation. My mother dies a hundred times every day. They don't know what that is like."
---- In July of 2018, an Amnesty International report entitled "God Knows If He's Alive," documented the plight of dozens of families in southern Yemen whose loved ones have been tortured, killed, or forcibly disappeared by Yemeni security forces reporting to the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The UAE is part of the Saudi-led coalition that, with vital US support, has been bombarding and blockading famine and disease-ravaged Yemen for three brutal years. The disappearances, and torture, can sadly be laid at the doorstep of the United States. … In June 2017, Human Rights Watch and the Associated Press exposed a network of clandestine prisons operated by the UAE in Yemen. Their reports described ghastly torture inflicted on prisoners and noted that senior US military leaders knew about torture allegations. Yet, a year later, there has been no investigation of these allegations by the Yemeni government, by the UAE, or by the UAE's most powerful ally in the Yemen war, the United States. … The Yemenis mean us no harm and have committed no crime against us. Congressional votes have come quite close, with bipartisan support, to ending US participation in and support for the Saudi and Emirati led Coalition war against Yemen. Ending arms sales to the UAE and Saudi monarchies, supported by both sides of the aisle, will signal to the UAE and Saudi Arabia the US will no longer assist their efforts to prolong war and siege in Yemen. [Read More] Two weeks ago Kathy Kelly spoke about the Yemen crisis to an audience in Syracuse, NY – see the video here.
Heroes of Their Own Story: Notes on the Mexican Election
By Margaret Cerullo and JoAnn Wypijewski, The Nation [July 26, 2018]
JoAnn Wypijewski: After the victory, after the long day of snaking lines, resolute voters, and elaborate public counting, there was band music in the morning. Brass, cymbal, drums—the whimsical clang roused me from a dream about kidnapping that, marvelously, had a happy ending. It was a school band, the sound of any Monday morning, Laura Saldivar, our brigade jefa and host in Tlayacapan, said: ordinary life and not, as I, half awake, had imagined, a public celebration. But this day ordinary things seemed newly clothed in the colors of the extraordinary. Laura had waited most of her life for such a day, 30 years, since the theft of Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas's electoral victory in 1988, when she participated in the electoral process even though she was too young to vote. Others said Mexico had waited almost 100 years.
Margaret Cerullo: Faint optimism with caution and no sentimentality at all was the response of the newly formed autodefensas [community self-defense force] in San Andres, Tlayacapan, which we first encountered the afternoon before the vote. During the day, community defenders sauntered around a sandbag bivouac beside a narrow road into the village, a cord loosely extended across its length, ready to be pulled taut. In the evenings, the patrols tightened, men stood poised with hunting rifles, several with bandannas drawn across their faces or wearing repurposed wrestling masks. "Everything is calm—so far. That is all we will say," one remarked on July 2. The autodefensas—who are self-organized to protect their communities, often against state and local police as well as organized crime—are new to the highlands of Morelos, and controversial among most people we spoke to, except, apparently, in the 1,500-member community of San Andres itself. [Read More]
WAR & PEACE
Entering a 1984 World, Trump-Style: Or Implementing the Sino-Russian Blueprint for a Tripolar World Order
By Michael T. Klare, Tom Dispatch [July 24, 2018]
---- The pundits and politicians generally take it for granted that President Trump lacks a coherent foreign policy. They believe that he acts solely out of spite, caprice, and political opportunism – lashing out at U.S. allies like Germany's Angela Merkel and England's Theresa May only to embrace authoritarian rulers like Russia's Vladimir Putin and North Korea's Kim Jong-un. His instinctive rancor and impulsiveness seemed on full display during his recent trip to Europe, where he lambasted Merkel, undercut May, and then, in an extraordinary meeting with Putin, dismissed any concerns over Russian meddling in the 2016 American presidential election (before half-walking his own comments back). … An examination of his campaign speeches and his actions since entering the Oval Office – including his appearance with Putin – reflect his adherence to a core strategic concept: the urge to establish a tripolar world order, one that was, curiously enough, first envisioned by Russian and Chinese leaders in 1997 and one that they have relentlessly pursued ever since. Such a tripolar order – in which Russia, China, and the U.S. would each assume responsibility for maintaining stability within their own respective spheres of influence while cooperating to resolve disputes wherever those spheres overlap – breaks radically with the end-of-the-Cold-War paradigm.[Read More] Also useful is an article published by Klare last month: "Girding for Confrontation: The Pentagon's Provocative Encirclement of China," Tom Dispatch [June 19, 2018] [Link].
Denuclearizing the Middle East
From Arno Mayer, et al., The New Arab [July 27, 2018]
---- The Middle East is in turmoil now, possibly again on the verge of a major war that could draw in the United States and Russia. President Donald Trump has pulled the United States out of the six nation nuclear agreement with Iran, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA. Although a few of his advisers counseled against leaving the agreement, he has brought into his cabinet advisers who are known to be hawkish toward the Middle East and prefer regime change in that area to regime reform. The most notable of these advisers is John Bolton, appointed as director of the National Security Agency. His policies align well with those of the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who condemned the nuclear accord with Iran from the outset. … It is time that those of us interested in the Middle East and world peace make our voices heard. We call on others to endorse policies that favour denuclearisation of the Middle East and a just and fair resolution of the Arab-Israeli dispute. [Read More]
---- The Middle East is in turmoil now, possibly again on the verge of a major war that could draw in the United States and Russia. President Donald Trump has pulled the United States out of the six nation nuclear agreement with Iran, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA. Although a few of his advisers counseled against leaving the agreement, he has brought into his cabinet advisers who are known to be hawkish toward the Middle East and prefer regime change in that area to regime reform. The most notable of these advisers is John Bolton, appointed as director of the National Security Agency. His policies align well with those of the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who condemned the nuclear accord with Iran from the outset. … It is time that those of us interested in the Middle East and world peace make our voices heard. We call on others to endorse policies that favour denuclearisation of the Middle East and a just and fair resolution of the Arab-Israeli dispute. [Read More]
Weapons Made In America
By Vijay Prashad, Popular Resistance [July 28, 2018]
---- US President Donald Trump has made economic nationalism the centrepiece of his political agenda. 'Made in America' is one his touchstones. Trade wars are part of his arsenal. Last month, in the shadows of the White House, Trump met with his advisers to cement a renewed approach – sell more weapons around the world. Other sectors of the US economy might be stagnant, but the arms industry is booming. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), US arms exports increased by 25% from 2013 to 2017. The United States now accounts for over a third of total arms exports. … The beneficiaries of this new policy will be the major arms manufacturers: Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics Corporation, United Technologies and Northrop Grumman. These six firms are among the eight largest weapons dealers on the planet (the two that are not American companies are the British arms dealer BAE Systems and the European arms dealer Airbus). These private companies sell weapons to 167 countries across the planet – that's 85% of the nation-states. [Read More] And to help visualize what this arms flow looks like, check out this short instructive video, "The United States of Arms."
It's Time for NATO to Go the Way of the Warsaw Pact
By , Foreign Policy in Focus [July 27, 2018]
---- The outcome of the July 11-12 NATO meeting in Brussels got lost amid the media's obsession with President Donald Trump's bombast, but the "Summit Declaration" makes for sober reading. The media reported that the 28-page document "upgraded military readiness," and was "harshly critical of Russia," but there wasn't much detail beyond that. But details matter, because that's where the devil hides. One such detail is NATO's "Readiness Initiative" that will beef up naval, air, and ground forces in "the eastern portion of the Alliance." NATO is moving to base troops in Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, and Poland. Since Georgia and Ukraine have been invited to join the Alliance, some of those forces could end up deployed on Moscow's western and southern borders. And that should give us pause. … With armed forces nose-to-nose, "a passage from crisis to conflict might be sparked by the actions of regional commanders or military commanders at local levels or come as a consequence of an unexpected incident or accident." According to the European Leadership Council, there have been more than 60 such incidents in the last year. https://fpif.org/its-time-for-nato-to-go-the-way-of-the-warsaw-pact/
The War in Yemen
Saudis & Allies Renew Bombing of Yemen Port City, Sparking Famine Fears
[July 28, 2018]
---- The Saudi-led coalition launched heavy air strikes on Yemen's main port city of Hodeidah on Friday, in an apparent resumption of military operations on the city after the Iranian-aligned Houthi movement attacked two Saudi oil tankers, residents said. The coalition on July 1 halted an attack on the Houthi-held city to aid UN efforts at a political solution that would avert an all-out assault on the Red Sea port, which the United Nations fears could trigger a famine throughout the country. … The alliance says capturing Hodeidah would cut off the main supply line of the Houthis and force the group to the negotiating table, but it has made no major gains since it launched the offensive on 12 June. UN special envoy to Yemen, Martin Griffiths, on Friday left Sanaa after another round of talks with the Houthis as part of weeks of shuttle diplomacy between the warring parties. The United Nations fears that cutting off Hodeidah port, a lifeline for millions, may trigger a famine in Yemen where around 8.4 million people are believed to be facing starvation. [Read More]
War with Iran?
Who Will Stop Trump from Tweeting Us into War with Iran?
By Medea Benjamin, Code Pink [July 25, 2018]
---- Donald Trump may be taking us to war on Iran and those who should be trying to stop him—from Congress to the grassroots—are too obsessed with Russia to even pay attention. Trump is well aware that a war with Iran would be a good diversion from his domestic and Russia travails, and could even help Republicans in the November elections. In 2012, when President Obama was down in the polls, Trump tweeted: "Looks like he'll have to start a war or major conflict to win. Don't put it past him!" So we certainly shouldn't put it past Donald Trump…. Lobby groups from AIPAC to the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies have also been stoking the conflict. So has the dissident group Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK). The MEK, a cult-like group that has killed Iranians and Americans alike and was on the U.S. terrorist list until 2012, is hated inside Iran for having sided with Saddam Hussein when he invaded Iran in 1980. … But the MEK's most influential cheerleader is John Bolton, who has spoken at their meetings eight times, for which he was well compensated. Bolton considers the MEK a legitimate opposition movement even though they have absolutely no base of support inside Iran. [Read More]
War with North Korea?
Towards Ending The 65 Years Of Armistice: Understanding The Process For Peace In Korea
By Gregory Elich, Zoominkorea.org [July 28, 2018]
---- July 27, 2018 marks the 65th anniversary of the Armistice Agreement which brought about a ceasefire to the Korean War. … While the purpose of the agreement was to "ensure a complete cessation of hostilities and of all acts of armed force in Korea until a final peaceful settlement is achieved," the effect was an unending Korean War with decades of escalating military tension on the Korean Peninsula. And a number of arrangements made on July 27, 1953 have yet to be implemented. Most notably, the U.S. has failed to contribute a plan for withdrawing its troops within the timeframe that was discussed in Article IV of the agreement. …While all other foreign forces eventually withdrew, the U.S. military never left Korean soil. To this day, the U.S. has more than 28,500 of its troops stationed all over South Korea. [Read More] Also useful/interesting is "An Audacious Proposal for a US–North Korean Alliance," by Tim Shorrock, The Nation [July 27, 2018] [Link].
THE IMMIGRATION CRISIS
(Video) "Brutal and Sadistic": Noam Chomsky on Family Separation & the U.S. Roots of Today's Refugee Crisis
From Democracy Now! [July 27, 2018]
---- Federal officials say 711 children remain separated from their parents despite Thursday's court-imposed deadline for the Trump administration to reunite all migrant children separated from their parents by immigration officials at the border. More than 400 parents have been deported back to their home countries while their children remain in U.S. custody in facilities scattered across the United States. For more on the Trump administration's family separation policy and the roots of today's refugee crisis, we speak with world-renowned political dissident, linguist, author and professor Noam Chomsky. [See the Program]
For more on the war/economic roots that cause people to flee their homes – Larry Mosqueda, "On the Origins of the Current Immigration "Crisis" at the Border," [Link]; and Mark Tseng-Putterman, "A Century of U.S. Intervention Created the Immigration Crisis," July 16, 2018] [Link].
ICE Has Conducted Hundreds of Raids in New York Since Trump Came to Power. Here's What Those Operations Look Like.
By Ryan Devereaux, The Intecept [
---- Dubbed ICEwatch, the interactive project, released Monday, is the culmination of years of work by the Immigrant Defense Project and the Center for Constitutional Rights, two of New York City's leading legal advocacy organizations. The project reflects some 665 reported ICE operations, from apartment raids to curbside snatch and grabs, from 2013 to the present. While a handful of examples are logged from as far west as California, the vast majority of the incidents were said to occur in the New York metropolitan area. With more than half of the incidents — a total of 462 events — reported after Trump's inauguration, the legal organizations behind the project say it shows an increase in several aggressive and coercive tactics under the new administration. [Read More] Also illuminating is Michelle Chen, "Wall Street's Ties to the Private Immigrant-Detention Network," The Nation [July 24, 2018] [Link]
GLOBAL WARMING/CLIMATE BREAKDOWN
Global Heat Wave made Twice as Likely by Humans Burning Coal, Oil & Gas
---- You've seen the headlines. Dozens of people dead in Japan of heat stroke. Massive forest fires raging in Sweden. Dozens dead in Athens from wildfires. Record temperatures in Oman and Algeria. The world is suffering from heat waves on four continents all at once. … We're farting out 37 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide a year, and our emissions were up by 2% last year. We were putting almost no carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in 1750, when there were about 270 parts per million of C02 up there as there had been for hundreds of thousands of years prior). Then we started burning coal to boil water to turn turbines, and then we started burning petroleum to run vehicles and we electrified our businesses and homes, using coal and natural gas. And we put out billions and billions of tons of C02 (remember this is a gas, so it doesn't weigh much– a ton of it is a lot). Now there are like 410 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It is a heat-trapping gas, so, duh, if you burn fossil fuels you will make the planet hot. [Read More] And for those planning to buy End Times real estate, check out this map of what/where will be habitable when the world gets 4 degrees C. hotter.
The Arctic Pandora's Box
By Eleanor Goldfield, Art Killing Apathy [July 16, 2018]
---- Folks in environmental movements have previously found a shallow comfort in the hope that as climate change pushes back against this road raging destruction, industries and governments would be forced to rethink their polluting ways, thereby shifting towards sustainable legislation and clean energy. After all, the price of oil is dropping. Natural gas is marked for export more often than not due to low prices and demand here in the US. Renewables make more economic sense – so how could the markets possibly reject a more sustainable future? Well, because they're capitalist. And shifting from fossil fuels – or mitigating hugely destructive mining operations – just isn't in the capitalist paradigm. It's about extraction, perpetual and personal growth and as little market (and paradigm) shift as possible. So, while renewables do have a place in the global market, so do the rapidly thawing cash crops of the Arctic. [Read More]
THE STATE OF THE UNION
2020 Democrats Band Together to Call for Puerto Rico Debt Cancellation
By David Dayen, The Intercept [
---- In another reflection of ideological shifts within the Democratic Party, several potential presidential candidates are joining forces on a bill that would enable mass debt cancellation for the struggling island of Puerto Rico. Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., are introducing the bill, the U.S. Territorial Relief Act of 2018, joined by Sens. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., and Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., putting many of the Senate's top contenders for the presidency in 2020 on the record that they believe Puerto Rico's debt should be discharged comprehensively. Puerto Rico carries over $70 billion in debt, most of it unsecured and eligible for the relief outlined in the bill. Gillibrand's inclusion is notable because she voted for PROMESA, the Democratic establishment's previous solution to the debt crisis in Puerto Rico. That bill, endorsed and signed by President Barack Obama, created an appointed fiscal oversight board to manage Puerto Rico's affairs, which has led to punishing austerity proposals, mass protests and a wave of privatization, with assets sold off to finance interest payments. The selling point in PROMESA, however, was the creation of a bankruptcy-like mechanism that could be used to wipe out some debt legally. But then, hurricanes Maria and Irma destroyed the island's infrastructure, putting Puerto Rico in the impossible position of rebuilding, attracting economic investment, and paying down debt simultaneously. [Read More]
Russiagate Update
The Elite Fixation With Russiagate: Does a broader public share this sense of crisis?
By Aaron Maté, The Nation [July 26, 2018]
---- In a recent Gallup poll on problems facing the country, the "Situation with Russia" was such a marginal concern that it did not even register. While an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll found that 64 percent believe Trump has not been tough enough on Russia, it also saw a near-even split on whether Putin is a foe or an ally, and 59 percent support for better relations. The gap between elite and public priorities highlights an endemic problem that long predates Trump. Since his election, however, the elite fixation on alleged Russian meddling and the president's suspected collusion has exacerbated that divide. From the outset, Russiagate proponents have exhibited a blind faith in the unverified claims of US government officials and other sources, most of them unnamed. … Fixation on the alleged Russian threat does not just obscure our own past. With the attendant suspicion of Trump's potential subordination to Putin, it is obscuring the reality in front of us. nyone paying attention to Trump's actual policies cannot escape the conclusion that his administration "has been much tougher on Russia than any in the post-Cold War era" wherein "U.S. policy toward Russia has, if anything, hardened under [Trump's] watch". [Read More] Also interesting/useful is "Democrats Shouldn't Defend Bad Policies Just to Resist Trump" by Robert L. Borosage, The Nation [July 26, 2018] [Link]
ISRAEL/PALESTINE
Israel's Nation-state Law: Teaching Jews That the World Is Flat
---- Not far, yet very far from there — under a lean-to in Khan al-Ahmar — women sit on thin mattresses placed on the ground and talk about the attack by police officers two weeks ago and a wedding party that is scheduled for this week. The strength and courage of these women from the Jahalin Bedouin tribe are equally evident. There, in those heartbreaking shelters, Israel's greedy racism is also an immediate issue, broadcast by the spacious houses of the settlement of Kfar Adumim. … The nation-state law reflects the reality of hedonistic discrimination that creates feelings of superiority and racism. This dangerous law declares the intentions of its authors: to teach additional generations of Israeli Jews that the world is flat and entrust them with the mission of expelling and wiping out a nation. Infected with superiority and devoid of shame, they're incapable of understanding that this strength, this courage, this rootedness and belonging that Palestinians have in their homeland, will always find ways to cope, to resist, to innovate and to fight. [Read More]
As Jews, we reject the myth that it's anti-Semitic to call Israel racist
By Rebecca Vilkomerson (Jewish Voice for Peace) and Richard Kuper (Jews for Justice for Palestinians -[UK]), The Independent [UK] [July 22, 2018]
---- A worldwide coalition of Jewish groups has issued a joint statement condemning attempts to stifle criticism of Israel with false accusations of antisemitism. The statement, which 40 Jewish groups from 15 different countries have signed, could not have been more timely. In the UK, the Labour Party is currently under pressure to adopt the full guidelines accompanying a definition of antisemitism from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). …Since being adopted by the UK government in December 2016, these guidelines have already been used to target organisations campaigning for Palestinian rights. Supporters of Israel have called on government to stop the annual "Israeli Apartheid Week" on university campuses on the grounds that it breaches the IHRA. But genuine anti-racist principles surely lead us to criticise Israel for its many discriminatory policies, whether its segregated road network, its dual justice system, or the "Jewish nation state" bill passed on Wednesday, which entrenches ethnic inequality in law. [Read More]
